Here's a question that should make you uncomfortable: If your company needed to cut 20% of costs tomorrow, and you're a high-performing mid-career IC making over $170K, what structural power do you have to prevent your name from appearing on that spreadsheet? Not your performance. Not your value. Your structural power. The answer for most mid-career individual contributors is the same: absolute...

Read time: 4 minutes | Forward to a friend   A recruiter friend admitted something to me recently that she was almost embarrassed to say out loud. She knows her company's ATS is rejecting qualified candidates - she sees it happen when people she knows personally get filtered out. But with 300+ applications per role, there's simply no way to review them all manually. The system is broken, she k...

Read time: 5 minutes | Forward to a friend The Trail Off the Cliff Last month, I watched a former colleague celebrate their promotion to Senior Director. Big title. Bigger salary. Expanded responsibilities. But when I asked what excited them most about the role, they paused. "Honestly? I'm just glad I stayed on track." On track. Like they were following painted lines on a factory floor. When d...